To help monitor city, Worcester police plan video command center

Friday

Sep 14, 2012 at 6:00 AMSep 14, 2012 at 9:49 PM

By Thomas Caywood TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

The city has been quietly moving toward a controversial policing strategy that's been catching on at metropolitan police departments for years — piping numerous security camera feeds from around the city into a video command center to help direct officers in the field.

The approach has produced mixed results in other cities where it has been tried. Proponents call the stream of real-time information from security cameras an invaluable resource for cops on the street; critics maintain video surveillance of high-crime areas imperils the privacy of law-abiding residents while shifting robberies and drug dealing to other streets just out of camera range.

Police Chief Gary J. Gemme did not respond yesterday to an interview request, but his spokeswoman provided a two-page summary of the department's plan to build a high-tech video surveillance hub, called the Real Time Crime Center, at its headquarters in Lincoln Square.

The department has hired a consultant to design the center, which it expects to begin operating next spring. The project is being funded by a $75,000 grant from the state Executive Office of Public Safety.

The project summary provided by police is written for unspecified “potential partners,” but appears to indicate the center will seek to gain access to live security camera video feeds from other government agencies or private entities.

“The RTCC aims to be a clearinghouse for real-time street video. We hope that between select Worcester Police Department assets and those of our stakeholder partners that we can link real-time data with real-time video. We will ask you for your support as we try to build out and link surveillance assets around the city,” the document states.

A more detailed glimpse of the planned program is available in city bid documents sent out earlier this month asking for price quotes on various equipment and software.

The request for bids specifies that one of two sought surveillance camera software packages must be the Omnicast system made by Montreal-based Genetec Inc., which the document identifies as compatible with the city's existing security cameras. The company's online brochures describe the Omnicast software package as a “unified security platform” for organizations needing “seamless management of digital video, audio and data” across any Internet Protocol network.

“Omnicast will grow with you, without limitations. This powerful video management system supports up to 50,000 cameras and an unrestricted number of client workstations,” according to the company's marketing materials.

The prospect of what could grow to become a citywide, multi-agency security camera network monitoring residents around the clock has some privacy advocates alarmed.

“We would certainly be concerned about the expansion of surveillance cameras in the city of Worcester, or anywhere for that matter,” said Chris Robarge, a Worcester resident and Central Massachusetts field coordinator for the American Civil Liberties Union. “There's also the issue that we're just finding out about this through the newspaper. There hasn't been any public discussion of this to my knowledge, and that's indicative of how the Worcester police administration does business, without transparency.”

Kade Crockford, director of the Technology for Liberty Program at the ACLU Massachusetts headquarters in Boston, said police departments around the country have increasingly turned to technology-based policing strategies that claim to harness the power of data to track and interrupt crime patterns.

“I'm not going to tell people in Worcester whether or not they should want surveillance cameras on their streets. That's for them to decide. But there have been a number of studies that show all these cameras really do is just push crime over to the next street,” Ms. Crockford said.

The University of California's Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society evaluated San Francisco's program of placing surveillance cameras in high-crime areas at the city's request and found the cameras were not reducing violent crime and had no significant effect on burglaries or car theft.

The 2009 report found, however, that pick-pocketing, car break-ins and other nonviolent thefts dropped between 20 and 30 percent within 100 feet of the cameras.

“The results have been really mixed,” said Jennifer King, one of the authors of the study and a doctoral candidate in information science at the University of California at Berkley.

The San Francisco cameras were not actively monitored as is proposed in Worcester, largely as a concession to privacy concerns, but Ms. King and her co-authors studied police security camera use in several cities with active monitoring as part of their report.

“Cities often don't think through carefully how they're going to integrate this into their policing. I think a lot of municipalities got bamboozled by the tech salesmen. These cameras can help, but they're not going to solve the problem and there seems to be little deterrence value,” Ms. King said.

The Worcester Police Department's request for bids seeks price quotes on a 60-inch high-definition television monitor with ceiling mounting hardware, six 24-inch widescreen computer monitors, two powerful computers, high-capacity video storage server, laser jet printer, router, network switching equipment, door security hardware, workstation desk and a heavy-duty chair for a dispatcher that the document indicates would be on duty in the center around the clock.

In addition to the Omnicast software, the bid document specifies a second video management software package, made by Milestone Systems of Denmark, which is compatible with the Worcester Housing Authority's security cameras.

Bids on the equipment and software are due to the city's purchasing division by Sept. 26, according to the document.

The NYPD opened a Real Time Crime Center in 2005 followed by other metropolitan police departments in Houston, Memphis, Los Angeles, Chicago and elsewhere.

Boston police built a $500,000 crime surveillance office, also dubbed a Real Time Crime Center, two years ago, largely paid for by federal grants. The Boston center is staffed by civilian technicians responsible for watching the video feeds and relaying information about crimes in progress to officers in the field, officials told The Boston Globe at the time the center was unveiled.

Ms. King said the most effective centers, such as the one in Los Angeles, use police officers, often injured employees assigned to light duty, to monitor the security camera footage and relay information to fellow officers on the street.

“Police departments in the United States are increasingly becoming like little militaries with their command centers and advanced surveillance technology,” Ms. Crockford said.

Mr. Robarge said, as a city taxpayer, he has concerns about the surveillance plan beyond the issue of privacy.

“I question the wisdom of spending money on all this,” he said. “It seems like not the best use of limited funding to be building some kind of nerve center inside the police station when what we really need is community policing out on the streets.”

The police department summary of the plan notes that building the center would bring Worcester in line with leading police departments around the country by combining within a single hub live video feeds and databases such as arrest records, probation information and crime mapping systems.

“In the next few weeks we will ask you to meet with us and our consultant to discuss ways the RTCC and your organization can work in concert with video and data,” according to the undated document. “With your support we can make our vision of the RTCC a reality.”

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